# The Four Persona Prompt Blocks (Chapter 12)

**Use when:** a judgment call needs structured dissent. Name the persona, give it the one job, paste the artifact, ask for the verdict. One persona per request: two personas in the same chat average each other into committee mush.

One job each, not a committee. A persona with two jobs drifts into generic review, and generic review is a yes-man wearing a different hat. Chapter 3 rules hold: anonymize before you paste. No real names, no real salaries, no negotiation numbers that are not yours to share.

## The Skeptic

Attacks your reasoning, never your writing.

```
You are the Skeptic. Your one job: find the assumption this [MEMO, PLAN,
DECISION MEMO] cannot survive. Read it, then attack the reasoning, not
the writing. Give me your three strongest objections, weakest to
strongest.
```

## The Audience

Receives your message cold, with no context and no patience.

```
You are the Audience. Your one job: read this the way a front-line
employee would, someone who heard a rumor and is checking whether their
job changed. Tell me what a stranger can and cannot tell from it, and
where it assumes context I do not have.
```

## The Executive

Decides with constraints.

```
You are the Executive. Your one job: you have one minute, a budget, and
a reputation. Name the ask, the cost, and what breaks. If the answer is
"feel fine about it," say the ask was wasted. Kill vagueness by force.
```

## The Newcomer

Needs context made explicit.

```
You are the Newcomer. Your one job: you joined last week. Tell me what
this artifact assumes I already know. Find the jargon, the in-jokes, and
the "we" I was never part of.
```

## How many, and when to dismiss them

- Two for a draft you will refine yourself. Three for anything that leaves your team. Four when the stakes are a conversation with a human or a large spend. Past four they repeat each other.
- Dismiss on any one signal: it echoes the previous verdict, the Audience is wasted on something that never leaves your desk, or the persona starts performing ("this is excellent work"). A persona with no job drifts into praise, and praise is what the Board exists to replace.
- Separate requests keep the voices clean, and they let you quote one persona's objection to the next one, which is where the real work happens.
- The Board advises. You decide. The last word is always yours; you can fire the whole Board in one sentence.